Reality
by nakarisaune
Summary: Skulduggery has been alone far too long. But Valkyrie's coming back. Set between Faceless Ones Dark Days, contains Death Bringer spoilers


It had maybe been three months of the torture before Valkyrie came back. The survivors were all dead now, or at least Skulduggery hoped they were - at least they wouldn't have to feel any more pain. He, however, did. It would be an eternity of torture until the Faceless Ones decided they were done with him (unlikely), found a way out of this reality (also unlikely), or killed him (this was quite honestly his favourite option).

The giant red sun hung low in the sky, cracking the ground further with its immense heat. Today he had taken shelter in one of the abandonedhouses. Leaning against the wall, he amused himself by reattaching his fingers. Painful, but it was really too much effort to do anything else.

"Hi," Valkyrie said.

Skulduggery's head snapped up. He surveyed Valkyrie closely. She looked almost the same as when he'd seen her last, except for a few scars on her face. She slipped off her jacket and wiped the sweat off her forehead. He tried to speak but it had been almost three months since he had last spoken and his jaw felt too heavy to even attempt speech with.

"Did you know," she said casually with that familiar smile on her face, "that saving our world cost trillions of lives?"

"Val," he managed to murmur.

"When the Ancients kicked them out, they got pushed to somewhere else. The Faceless Ones broke through countless realities before ending up here. They destroyed everything in their path for fun." She tilted her head. "It's a shame they haven't destroyed you yet, isn't it?"

"Val," he said again. "Val, is it really you?"

"Yes." She sat down next to him on the dusty floor. "And I can prove it."

"I believe you, Val."

"How about I tell you something only we would know?"

Skulduggery turned to face her quickly, making his spine creak in protest of the movement. "I believe you, Val. It's you, you're here, I missed you so-"

She cut him off. "You're Lord Vile." Then she stood up and retrieved her jacket.

"Val," he whispered.

Valkyrie tilted her head. "What?"

"Val, why did you come here?"

She walked to the archway of the door, sighing, turning around just as Skulduggery was sure she was going to leave him forever like everyone else did. "I just came to check you hadn't become a psychotic mass murderer again."

"You didn't come to rescue me?" He reached a hand out weakly. "I thought..."

"Well, you thought wrong. You're not really worth rescuing, are you? I'll come get you if we need a psychopathic necromancer who kills for fun, thank you very much. But there's no way we can trust you now that we've found out. Everybody knows. There are quite a lot of people who would like to rip your bones apart right now."

He fumbled for a quip. "And nobody who wants to jump them?"

"You," Valkyrie said coldly, "disgust me."

She left quietly. The Faceless Ones came loudly.

The next day Valkyrie came again and she read out a long list of names - the names of the people Lord Vile had killed. Skulduggery lay there and he didn't fight back when the Faceless Ones hunted him that night.

Sometimes Ghastly came and talked about his mother, who was so brave she had tried to fight Lord Vile single-handedly. Then Ghastly would come closer and he'd whisper the story of how his mother had died right into Skulduggery's eye socket.

Sometimes, China came, and she'd read huge tomes to him that detailed how much of a terrible person he was. Sometimes, his child tip-toed into the room and talked about how disappointing it was to have a murderer for a father. It was only when they started singing and dancing that he figured out they weren't real.

After almost a year alone, the hallucinations were becoming oddly amusing, which was worrying as they were figments of his imagination. At least they didn't talk about Lord Vile anymore, and they'd occasionally helped him practise his elemental powers. But those were just as useless as the hallucinations. All he could do with them was fight the Faceless Ones, and no matter how much he fought, they always won. He lay on the dusty ground with one remaining limb and no remaining hope.

A hallucination, taking the shape of Valkyrie like so many did, walked slowly, so very slowly, to the middle of the room. "Hello?" she whispered.


End file.
